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Variety

Longtime China hand Peter Loehr will exit Beijing-based Legendary East at the end of the month, leaving another senior post to be filled at Dalian Wanda-owned Legendary Entertainment after the recent departure of founder Thomas Tull.

China-watching isn’t what it used to be. Not too long ago, the field of international China studies was dominated by a few male Westerners with an encyclopedic knowledge of China, but with surprisingly little experience living in the country or...

South China Morning Post

The conspicuous absence of the heads of state from the major Western economic powers and Japan at the belt and road summit this month in Beijing is a big mistake and a missed opportunity for enhancing dynamic and cooperative globalisation.

Xinhua

Construction of Boeing’s first overseas facility as part of its 737 production system started Thursday in the east China port city of Zhoushan. The construction will consist of two parts -- a Boeing 737 completion center and the delivery center. It...

Bloomberg

China’s Middle East energy footprint has been expanding. In February, it made a deal for a stake in Abu Dhabi’s onshore oil. In March, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz travelled to China to strengthen trade ties, and now a Chinese consortium...

Reuters

China’s President Xi Jinping initiated the ambitious “Belt and Road” development plan but it has become a world plan not tied to his presidency, the Commerce Ministry said on Wednesday, days before Xi hosts a global forum on the initiative.

New York Times

Over the weekend, there was the unseemly spectacle of Jared Kushner’s sister, Nicole Meyer, hawking golden visas to connected Chinese investors if they would put $500,000 into one of the Kushners’ real estate projects in Jersey City.

“The American Chamber of Commerce has urged Hong Kong’s next government to reach out to international businesses still ‘unclear’ about what opportunities the city can offer under the one country, two systems policy.” —South China Morning Post, April...

Washington Post

A much-criticized visa program that allows foreigners to win fast-track immigration in return for investing $500,000 in U.S. properties was extended in a bill signed by President Trump just one day before a sister of senior White House adviser Jared...

Reuters

Up to 5,000 ethnic Uighurs from China's violence-prone far western region of Xinjiang are fighting in various militant groups in Syria, the Syrian ambassador to China said on Monday, adding that Beijing should be extremely concerned about it...

TechCrunch

There’s good news for foreigners living in, or visiting, China after Didi Chuxing — the local ride-sharing leader — added support for English language and overseas credit cards to its service for the first time.

South China Morning Post

After a three year delay the long-awaited maiden flight of China’s 158-seat C919 passenger aircraft is scheduled for Friday, the latest step by the country to break the duopoly of Western giants Airbus and Boeing.

Books

China’s Mobile Economy: Opportunities in the Largest and Fastest Information Consumption Boom is a cutting-edge text that spotlights the digital transformation in China. Organized into three major areas of the digital economy within China, this ground-breaking book explores the surge in e-commerce of consumer goods, the way in which multi-screen and mobile Internet use has increased in popularity, and the cultural emphasis on the mobile Internet as a source of lifestyle- and entertainment-based content. Targeted at the global business community, this lucid and engaging text guides business leaders, investors, investment banking professionals, corporate advisors, and consultants in grasping the challenges and opportunities created by China’s emerging mobile economy, and its debut on the global stage.The year of 2014-15 marks the most important inflection point in the history of the Internet in China. Almost overnight, the world’s largest digitally-connected middle class went both mobile and multi-screen (smart phone, tablets, laptops, and more), with huge implications for how consumers behave and what companies need to do to successfully compete. As next-generation mobile devices and services take off, China’s strength in this arena will transform it from a global “trend follower” to a “trend setter.”Understand what the digital transformation in China is, and impact on global capital markets, foreign investors, consumer companies, and the global economy as a whole.Explore the e-commerce consumption boom in the context of the Chinese market.Understand the implications of the multi-screen age and mobile Internet for China’s consumersSee how mobile Internet use, its focus on lifestyle and entertainment is aligned with today’s Chinese culture.Learn about the mobile entertainment habits of China’s millennial generation and the corresponding new advertisement approaches.The development of China’s mobile economy is one of the most important trends that will reshape the future of business, technology, and society both in China and the world. China's Mobile Economy introduces you to the digital transformation in China, and explains how this transformation has the potential to transform both China and the global consumer landscape. —John Wiley & Sons, Inc.{chop}

Each March, Beijing hosts the “Two Sessions,” massive meetings of the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Members of the two bodies of the nation’s legislature meet for a week in the Great Hall of...

New York Times

Wu Xiaohui, the Chinese tycoon who was in failed talks with President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to buy into a skyscraper project in Manhattan, is fighting allegations of financial chicanery and has threatened to sue a Chinese magazine that...

China Daily

Jack Ma announced on Tuesday that Alibaba will host a two-day conference in Detroit in June to teach U.S. businesses how to sell to the company’s 443 million customers in China on the world’s biggest e-commerce site.

CNN

CNN

Pro tip for countries looking to keep their tourism numbers up: Don’t annoy China. That’s the lesson South Korea is learning the hard way. The country suffered a 40% plunge in Chinese visitors last month, according to the Korea Tourism Organization.

Chris Buckley is a highly regarded and very resourceful correspondent based in Beijing for The New York Times. He has worked as a researcher and journalist in China since 1998, including a stint at Reuters, and is one of the few working China...

Books

China’s labor landscape is changing, and it is transforming the global economy in ways that we cannot afford to ignore. Once-silent workers have found their voice, organizing momentous protests, such as the 2010 Honda strikes, and demanding a better deal. China’s leaders have responded not only with repression but with reforms. Are China’s workers on the verge of a breakthrough in industrial relations and labor law reminiscent of the American New Deal?In A New Deal for China’s Workers? Cynthia Estlund views this changing landscape through the comparative lens of America’s twentieth-century experience with industrial unrest. China’s leaders hope to replicate the widely shared prosperity, political legitimacy, and stability that flowed from America’s New Deal, but they are irrevocably opposed to the independent trade unions and mass mobilization that were central to bringing it about. Estlund argues that the specter of an independent labor movement, seen as an existential threat to China’s one-party regime, is both driving and constraining every facet of its response to restless workers.China’s leaders draw on an increasingly sophisticated toolkit in their effort to contain worker activism. The result is a surprising mix of repression and concession, confrontation and cooptation, flaws and functionality, rigidity and pragmatism. If China’s laborers achieve a New Deal, it will be a New Deal with Chinese characteristics, very unlike what workers in the West achieved in the last century. Estlund’s sharp observations and crisp comparative analysis make China’s labor unrest and reform legible to Western readers. —Harvard University Press{chop}

ABC

Top diplomats from China and the European Union pledged closer cooperation Wednesday, highlighting their common interests in peace and security and pushing a message of free trade and open engagement in contrast to fears that the U.S. is turning...

At a time of strained and erratic relations between the U.S. and China, Ivanka Trump, the President’s daughter and, more recently, a member of his administration, has emerged as an unlikely but singularly potent emissary, not to just to China’s...

Nairobi-based researcher Zander Rounds joins Eric and Cobus to discuss a new comparative study on employment relations at Chinese and American firms in Kenya. Zander co-authored the report with China House Kenya founder Huang Hongxiang as part of a...

CBS News

Chinese conglomerate Fosun International will remain on the lookout for investment opportunities in the West amid concerns in the market over capital controls and debt levels, according to the company’s chairman.

Wall Street Journal

On Thursday Ford Motor announced its China-focused electric-car strategy, including new vehicles. Ford’s Chief Executive Mark Fields said the “time is right” for his company to beef up in China. It is playing catch-up, though.

New York Times

China is investing in Silicon Valley start-ups with military applications at such a rapid rate that the United States government needs tougher controls to stem the transfer of some of America’s most promising technologies, a Pentagon report says.

At the summit in Mar-a-Lago, U.S. President Donald Trump hopes to alter deeply-rooted Chinese policies despite having no China strategy. China’s Communist Party Secretary Xi Jinping hopes that by making deals on secondary matters important to Trump...

Bloomberg

The Trump administration is so alarmed that Chinese investors may try to purchase Westinghouse Electric Co.’s nuclear business that U.S. officials are trying to find an American or allied buyer for the company instead, two people familiar with the...

Who will be the winner of the upcoming Trump-Xi summit? My answer: That’s a dangerous—and wrongheaded—question to focus on. Yes, we want the U.S. to win, but the U.S.-China relationship must be played and judged as a long game.The present situation...

Books

When Deng Xiaoping launched China on the path to economic reform in the late 1970s, he vowed to build “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” More than three decades later, China’s efforts to modernize have yielded something very different from the working people’s paradise Deng envisioned: an incipient kleptocracy, characterized by endemic corruption, soaring income inequality, and growing social tensions. China’s Crony Capitalism traces the origins of China’s present-day troubles to the series of incomplete reforms from the post-Tiananmen era that decentralized the control of public property without clarifying its ownership.Beginning in the 1990s, changes in the control and ownership rights of state-owned assets allowed well-connected government officials and businessmen to amass huge fortunes through the systematic looting of state-owned property—in particular land, natural resources, and assets in state-run enterprises. Mustering compelling evidence from over two hundred corruption cases involving government and law enforcement officials, private businessmen, and organized crime members, Minxin Pei shows how collusion among elites has spawned an illicit market for power inside the party-state, in which bribes and official appointments are surreptitiously but routinely traded. This system of crony capitalism has created a legacy of criminality and entrenched privilege that will make any movement toward democracy difficult and disorderly.Rejecting conventional platitudes about the resilience of Chinese Communist Party rule, Pei gathers unambiguous evidence that beneath China’s facade of ever-expanding prosperity and power lies a Leninist state in an advanced stage of decay. —Harvard University Press{chop}

Reuters

South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co and Kia Motors Corp have sharply cut vehicle production in China, sources said, as anti-Korean sentiment and competition from Chinese brands play havoc on sales and threaten earnings.

USA Today

On April 6-7, U.S. President Donald Trump will host Xi Jinping in their first face-to-face meeting when China’s President arrives at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. The meeting comes early in Trump’s presidency, after a campaign in which he frequently...

We are now well into the first 100 days of the Trump administration. His supporters expect major changes in the China relationship. They voted for a man who promised to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese goods and slap China with the currency...

NPR

The family of President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has called off talks with Chinese insurance company Anbang to redevelop a Manhattan office tower—a deal that raised ethical concerns.

CNBC

American Airlines has agreed to pay $200 million for a stake in China Southern Airlines, the biggest of China’s three major state-owned carriers, in a bid for a bigger share of the country's growing travel market...